Thread and Cotton
by sweet-and-simple
Summary: Gaara-kun had a hole where his heart would have been, had he been alive. AU


There was a bloody sunrise to follow the moonless night, catching the awakening city of Konohagakure on fire. Downtown, with its bulging central office and smaller, surrounding buildings, was beginning to wake up, civilians caught in the glow of dawn taking to the cement with a drowsy disposition, unaware of just how heartrending the morning looked.

And Gaara-kun had a hole where his heart would have been, had he been alive.

Lee frowned and held the limp body up from the pile of garbage Gaara-kun had been thrown into. "You don't mind if I call you Gaara-kun, do you? Gaara is a cool name! Gaa-ra. Ga-a-ra. Ga-ara… See, it's cool no matter how you say it. It, it's hip!"

His frown deepened as the limp body only sagged in his hands, his limbs handless and feetless, allover tragically bruised with filth and years of wear and tear.

"Nana-san is teaching me how to sew," He told Gaara-kun conversationally. "Nana-san runs the orphanage, you know, she's like everyone's mom. She's the only mom I've ever known, anyway. She's tough and scary, but she's nice too. She'll let me fix you, no doubt about it! Because you're so cool looking, and you'll look even better if you're not about to fall to pieces."

Then his eyebrows drew thoughtfully together, dark, dark eyes narrowed, lips turned downward; altogether, it was a very intense expression of concentration that he gave Gaara-kun, gently poking at him with his thumbs. "We'll have to clean you, first. Then I'll fill you up! Someone ripped out all your innards and stuff, and, OH, I know what I'll do! I'll make a heart for you, so you can feel love and things. You need a heart to feel, Gaara-kun!"

He stood up, dusted off his shorts and knees with one hand, Gaara-kun secured to his chest with the other, and then cuddled Gaara-kun to him as he kept talking to him. "Nana-san says that heartless people are the worst, but you're not bad, so you're going to need a heart or else Nana-san is going to say you're the worst! Ah, but she doesn't like tattoos either…" He poked at the ridges of the kanji symbol stitched into Gaara-kun's forehead, then let his hand fall down to trace the dark shadows around one of his blue-green button eyes. It was falling off and he gently pressed it back into Gaara-kun's white face.

"I guess I can say you didn't have a choice," Lee mumbled.

"My name is Lee, by the way!" he chirped to the unresponsive Gaara-kun. "Rock Lee!" He shook one stump of an arm in his hand, as was polite to do with someone he had just meant, and smiled into a dull, round, lifeless blue-green stare. "I hope we can be good friends!"

~::~

Nana-san was old. Lee would think, in the back of his mind where he hoped Nana-san couldn't hear him, that she was older than dirt and looked just about as trampled.

But she stood straight, which kind of made her a little less scary looking. Her skin was dark, tortured by years on end of being thrown into the sun's glare, though, and creased like layers of dough being squished together. Her eyes were pale, milky even, and yet they saw right through anyone she looked at, leaving everyone with a chilling sensation of being discovered.

She said she was from an old world, whenever Lee asked her about why she looked so scary (in an innocent way, a sort of wonderment, like how another _normal_ kid would ask why the sky was blue), and then she would scowl at him and he would laugh because Lee – Lee _wasn't afraid_. Not of her and the weird weapons she kept in her wardrobe.

He'd like to think he'd met scarier things under his bed. Like the one time his lamp was possessed and it started smashing its light bulb against the underside of his mattress frame. Not that anyone had believed him. Because he was _Rock Lee, the freak_, the kid who 'made things up so he could get attention'.

But Nana-san always believed him, even pointed out other strange things to him and let him lead her to unusual places, and that automatically made her a better person in his eyes than most of the other adults he knew.

He trounced into the courtyard, making a quick detour to high-five the red hand that dangled from the cherry blossom tree in the front lawn, already late for breakfast (not that it was something he was worried about; he most likely wouldn't have been allowed to have breakfast anyway, seeing as how he disappeared without telling anyone and went outside the orphanage without a guardian accompanying him). Gaara-kun was clutched to his chest as he dashed up the front steps, cleverly leaped the third stair (it kept crying whenever people walked all over it), and then zipped through the small, clustered foyer across the long, narrow dining hall, into the forbidden wing.

Forbidden, that was, from the orphans. Only the adults were allowed back here. It was their getaway place, like a lounge, and their bedrooms were back here too, far enough away from where the orphans slept so that they wouldn't be kept up all night if the kids started screaming bloody murder. Still, Lee would always sneak back here.

Nana-san encouraged it. She would say, "We're here _for_ the children. Not to get _away_ from them." And then she would scowl at the other nurses and they would cower away from her. Lee would giggle.

This time, though, was serious, so he charged down the corridor, stumbled and then tripped to a stop in front of her room, and slammed his fist against her door, determined to see Nana-san!

There was a deep, thoughtful silence that surrounded Nana-san's quarters. It extended inquisitively down the hall, as if Nana-san was a palm and from her stretched and wriggled fingers that were constantly looking to grab onto something, anything, and then drag it back.

"Come in, Lee."

He nearly broke the knob off, he was so excited, and then he paused and bowed his head respectfully. He had to remember to be polite! "N-Nana-san! Look what I found!" He held up Gaara-kun before him, like an offering to the gods, and Nana-san stared hard at Gaara-kun for a short, eternal moment, seeing the entirety that was Gaara-kun before she clucked her tongue impatiently.

"Well, Lee?"

He frowned. "Well, what, Nana-san?"

"Will you introduce me to what you found?"

His smile could have lit Konohagakure for weeks. "This is Gaara-kun! Gaara-kun, this is Nana-san, the woman I've been telling you all about. Nana-san, I need to fix up Gaara-kun! He's falling apart and, and he has no heart! And, um, he, er, _hasatattoo_ – but don't worry, I can – "

"So he does have a tattoo." Nana-san's severe, cold voice cut him off. "I do not approve, Lee."

"B-b-b-but…" His dark, dark eyes grew teary, just the slightest bit. "He's so _cool_ looking! And, and hip!"

"He looks like a bad doll, Lee. Go put him back where you found him."

Lee flinched and held Gaara tighter. "I don't… want to." And he wasn't a doll.

Nana-san turned her scouring gaze on him, watching him as he ran a shaky hand through Gaara's filthy, caked hair. Its color had been lost due to just how much taint had stuck and gnarled his thick locks – no, not just that, but his entire figure.

His blue-green button eyes stared back at her, mouth, just a thick black slash across his face, slightly curved downward into a less stern frown, but displeased nonetheless.

Another long moment passed in quiet, only disturbed by the curious nature of Nana-san's presence. "Well, if you do not want to, then there is nothing to be done about it, is there? Before anything else, you _will_ need to wash him. Then stitch him back together _neatly_. I'm going to have to teach you how to knit as well, or do you have another way of procuring a heart for your miscreant friend?"

Lee only grinned, not sure about that last thing Nana-san had said, but just happy that he could keep Gaara-kun. "You're the greatest, Nana-san! Don't you think so, Gaara-kun?"

Nana-san carefully retrieved her comb and smoothed out her thin, snowy white wisps of tresses into a painfully tight bun. "First, a bath. For both of you. It is a hot day outside and I will not have you sweating all over everyone else because you decided to be naughty."

"Understood, Nana-san!"

"Be careful with his hair. From the looks of it, it may even be horse hair."

Lee gawked with awe. "Do you think so?"

"Well, either that or we have met a doll maker with a strange taste for raccoon fur." She set the comb aside and replaced it with a small boot knife, gingerly hiding it away. "Take good care of Gaara-kun."

"Without a doubt!"

Then he paused. "You'll help me fix him up, won't you, Nana-san?"

She scowled at him. "Without a doubt."

~::~

It was raccoon fur, but it had been dyed red at one point, crimson red, like fresh blood. Except Lee didn't see it that way at first, not until Nana-san pointed it out. He had been thinking, instead, that Gaara-kun's head looked like a very frizzy red rose.

He hummed as he gently brushed the surprisingly thick locks, letting them fray in whatever direction they wanted, which, amusingly enough, was _every_ direction. Gaara-kun had permanent bed hair!

Lee giggled behind his hand and then sternly reprimanded himself for laughing at a friend. "After we get you all cleaned up, we're going to fill you up again, so you're not just skin! And, well, eyes… and hair…" He traced back his thoughts to what he had been getting at. "You're going to need hands and feet too! If you don't have hands and feet, then you'll just be clumsy and you won't be able to hold onto anything and, and you won't be smart. That's what Sensei says, anyway. It's because we have thumbs that we're so smart! But monkeys have thumbs too, and, when we went to the zoo last year, one got possessed by a playful spirit and she tried to pick me up by my braid. But I was safe because Nana-san was there!"

He pouted and tugged on said braid, stopping for a moment in brushing Gaara-kun's hair. It had grown longer since last year, the braid, that was, and reached just past his shoulders now. He blankly tickled Gaara-kun's face with the end strands. "No one believed me then either. They just said that the monkey was acting weird and they would do something about it. I haven't been to the zoo since."

"You believe me, don't you, Gaara-kun?"

Lee waited for an answer. Gaara-kun only stared at him with his gleaming blue-green button eyes, both stitched firmly back into Gaara-kun's face.

He sighed and went back to brushing Gaara-kun's hair as gently as possible. "You're not very talkative, are you? Do you know what talkative means? It means you talk _a lot_. Nana-san says I'm talkative. But, that's because it's Nana-san and I don't have anyone else to talk to… And, and now there's you! Because you're cool and hip and I've been spending a lot of time with you."

He held Gaara-kun at arm's length, sizing him up. "At least you're clean now. And, I must say, you look devilishly handsome! Even if you're way too thin… I guess we'll wait for you to dry off. Oh, and, while you do that, I'll ask Nana-san how to knit hands and feet and a heart! You still need those things. Right, Gaara-kun?"

He waited a polite moment, just in case Gaara-kun _did_ want to say something, and then he smiled.

"Right!"

~::~

Nana-san told him to cut off the ends of the stumps that constituted for Gaara-kun's limbs. So he did. Then she taught him how to make hands and feet, using tones that she had discovered to match Gaara-kun's skin. They were good hands and feet, the hands with four fingers and a thumb each, and the feet with five toes apiece! He even put lines in the palms, because Gaara-kun needed a destiny for someone to read, didn't he?

Nana-san stood back and watched his progress. When he proudly displayed the appendages to her, she nodded sternly, scowled, and then said, "Now we need to be very careful about how we attach them to Gaara. If you do it incorrectly, you will only hurt the doll. If you do it right, you will be helping him."

"Right!" Then he gingerly laid Gaara-kun down on their working table and began on his left side, first with the foot, as Lee liked to think Gaara-kun would care more about walking than grabbing onto things just yet. "You know, Nana-san…"

"Yes?"

"Gaara-kun's not a doll."

The air around Nana-san churned, or, perhaps, to be more exact, it swam, almost as if in confusion, though her expression never changed from that of cold finality. "Oh?"

"He's just hurt really bad. But, don't worry! Once I, _we_, fix him up (sorry, Nana-san), he'll be good as new!"

He finished the foot, frowned at the stitches that were left behind, _like scars_, and then moved onto the other foot. Nana-san only spoke again when he began to attach Gaara-kun's left hand.

"Do you know what Gaara is?"

He giggled because, to him, that was a silly question. "Gaara-kun's my friend, of course!"

Nana-san scowled at him. "Of course."

~::~

Something had snuck under his bed again, except, this time, it wasn't his lamp, and it wasn't trying to bash its own light bulb out in a show of sparks.

It growled and shifted and squirmed uncomfortably, making Lee's bed screech and jerk with every slight movement. It was big, big enough that Lee could see its long tail sticking out from under the bed frame, and, on the other side, its thick arms, almost tiger-like legs, occasionally reached out, as if to grab something, but always retracted back into the darkness, empty-pawed.

Lee wasn't scared, but he was very tired.

He sighed and looked at the other nine boys he was roomed with, this being a decently large sleeping space. They were lined up across from each other, five on two sides of the room, and, beside each of their beds, was a small dresser, enough for them to stow their clothes and whatever few valuables they wanted to stash away. They each had a key to their own dresser, so that no one else would steal into them, but the head nurse had a master set too, so there was no hiding away anything bad.

Not unless the bad things were hidden somewhere else while the head nurse did a dresser check.

He sighed again when the thing under his bed mewled pathetically, and then glared at the peacefully sleeping boy nearest him. "I'm the only one that ever gets woken up by these things," Lee grumbled lowly to Gaara-kun, secured in the nook of his arm. "Well, not always. That one time the lamp blew itself out, everyone woke up – but they thought I broke it."

The bed moved again with a small screech, not enough to stir anyone, and then stilled. He heard the thing roll over and then its long, thick arms were prodding at his legs, wickedly long claws snagging on his blanket.

Lee stared, still not afraid, but slightly annoyed because he really _was_ tired, and it was way past midnight already, and he was always very strange whenever he didn't get any sleep. He would pass out standing up, or even walking, having conversations that he would never remember, and it would be hours later before anyone would realize that he wasn't even awake, and that only made him _more_ different, and he didn't like it at all.

Then, unexpectedly, the paw retreated off the bed, but continued to hang in the air. With a shy sort of demeanor, it waved at him.

"Hello, Under-My-Bed-san," Lee whispered. "Do you mind not moving around so much? I need to get some sleep, or else I will be very strange tomorrow… today. When it is time to get up." He frowned at himself. Was it tomorrow or today? Well, it was technically _tomorrow_, but then that made it _today_, so…

The thing mewled again, whimpered, and his bed frame quivered as it writhed.

"You can stay if you like, Under-My-Bed-san, but you must be still!"

There was a lengthy silence as claws scrabbled at the floor and the tail swished from side to side, coming within inches of knocking his bed frame free of two of its legs. Finally, with an air of defeat, there was serenity.

Lee looked over the edge of the bed, Gaara-kun with him, and saw that the tail was still there. Though, to him, it looked as if it was… shaking. Shivering, even, and his mouth formed a small 'o' of understanding. "Are you cold, Under-My-Bed-san? It's not a very warm night, is it? And the floor must be freezing!"

The thing huffed, after a short hesitation, and Lee nodded curtly, taking this as an affirmative. He turned to Gaara-kun. "You will keep me warm, won't you, Gaara-kun?"

Gaara-kun said nothing, but Lee still smiled, pleased, and then struggled free of his blanket before balling it up and sliding it under his bed.

The frame and mattress squeaked and screeched for a long moment before the stillness returned, and a heavy, relieved sigh reached Lee's ears. He beamed as the thing's tail curled up and around his forearm in thanks before slinking back under the bed.

Lee turned onto his side, at last able to close his eyes and slip away into innocent, deranged dreams of green beasts and fiery foxes and fat raccoons.

~::~

It was a plush heart, a scarlet to match Gaara-kun's red rose locks, and Lee squeezed it in his hand just to feel how taut it was.

Earlier yesterday, Nana-san had let him hold a pig's heart, and Lee had worked long and hard since then to recreate it perfectly. Well, not in shape – it looked like the conventional Valentines heart, with two curves coming down into a point – but in just about everything else. It took force to get the heart to palpitate in his palm, and then, when he released, the heart regained its former shape, and he felt its dips and veins (he was really proud of himself for the veins) beneath his fingertips.

It was a plush heart, and it was Gaara-kun's heart, made by Lee with love, and he giggled at the thought because Gaara's forehead read _love_. So, maybe, Gaara-kun had been made with love too.

That didn't explain how he ended up in the garbage, though, and Lee quickly stopped laughing at the very memory of it.

"Well, Gaara-kun! I'm going to fill you up so you're not so thin, and I'm going to give you your heart, then I'm going to sew you shut so your innards and stuff don't fall out. Then you'll be good as new!" Gaara-kun had been paper-thin this entire time, lolling in Lee's grasp whenever he picked him up.

It would be nice to make Gaara-kun full again.

Humming tunelessly, he made the hole in Gaara-kun's chest wider, slitting him down the middle from beneath his head to the junction of his legs, and then put down a layer of cotton. The cotton wasn't white, because no one's inside was _white_, that would be silly! No, he had dyed the cotton pink and pale purple and bloody red and other innards-colors. He stuffed the cotton into Gaara-kun's fingers and toes, and then his legs and arms, and then he filled up Gaara-kun's head. In the nest of it all, he set the heart right where a heart should be, and smiled at Gaara-kun.

"You look much better now that you're not so thin, Gaara-kun! Very cool. And you've got a heart, so Nana-san can't say you're heartless."

He hummed again, happy and carefree, as the heart began to slowly beat, and then bleed into the cotton, spider web-thin vessels squiggling to Gaara-kun's head and each of his limbs and other places.

"I bet you feel a lot better now," Lee chirped. He went to sew the cut shut, sealing away Gaara-kun's innards (and stuff), but, instead, ended up gasping in shock, and then in delight, as the cut stitched itself shut, leaving behind another scar of thread. "You _are_ feeling a lot better!"

Gaara-kun, still laying on the working table, wiggled his fingers and toes. Lee sat back and giggled as Gaara-kun shakily got to his feet and toddled and tripped across the length of the small station, unsteady on his new appendages. He stared at his hands with his blue-green button eyes, and then swung his head to look up at Lee, teetered, and then ended up falling over at the unexpected momentum.

Lee laughed behind his hand and gently picked Gaara-kun back up. "Are you alright, Gaara-kun?"

He stared at Lee for a moment. Suddenly, he toppled over again, lifelessly, and Lee giggled because he knew it was an act.

It had always been an act.

But the door to the activities room swung open before he could call Gaara-kun on it and Nana-san stood sternly in the archway, looking like she had been in a fight with a tiger, her boot knife in hand, and she scowled unpleasantly at Lee.

"You forgot to inform me that there was a baku beneath your bed."

Lee thoughtfully tapped his bottom lip. "What's a baku?"

Nana-san's scowl deepened. "It is that thing under your bed."

"Under-My-Bed-san is very shy, so I'm not sure what exactly is under my bed."

"… Under-My-Bed-san?"

"It won't tell me its name, either. I had to call it something, it's not polite to just started calling things 'things', Nana-san."

She must have had nothing to say to that because she said nothing at all. Instead, her eyes swiveled in their sockets to look at Gaara-kun. "You've finished already?"

Lee's eyes glittered triumphantly. "Nope! Gaara-kun finished himself."

~::~

Gaara-kun didn't move again. Lee thought that, maybe, Gaara-kun was angry with him, or that he was asleep. Perhaps he hadn't been playing a trick when he had toppled over, Lee reckoned, but had, instead, passed out.

Lee wouldn't know the shock of getting a heart and hands and feet and having his body sliced open and being stitched and scrubbed and wrung and flopped and laid on, so he assumed that it was pretty great and waited hopefully for Gaara-kun to wake up.

And then, one night, he was roused to consciousness and blatantly realized that, _hey_, he and Gaara-kun had met on the new moon, hadn't they?

Now, a whole month later when the moon was a dark splotch in the sky, there was a man perched on the edge of his bed. He had red rose hair, thick and sticking up in every direction, and his blue-green eyes, not buttons, were heavily shadowed, like there had been one too many sleepless nights for him. The sleeves of his burgundy cassock were strained, arms outstretched, and Lee could see scars around his wrists.

Over the cassock was a grayish buckle vest and black bondage pants were tight to a pair of legs that led to bare feet. Scars circled his ankles too. Lee imagined there were more scars on the man's chest and belly.

Lee blinked and the man blinked back at him. His mouth wasn't a black slash in his face, but pale lips, and Lee cocked his head at all of these differences that made Gaara-kun look… _human_.

"You're not small enough to carry around anymore," he said at last, not knowing that this was the moment where other people would be screaming for help, crying about the stranger in their bed, terrified of the scarred wrists and the pupil-less blue-green stare they were being subjected to. "That makes me sad, Gaara-kun! Now what am I going to hold onto?"

He whispered because his nine bedmates were still asleep, but he pouted too and his eyebrows drew together in displeasure.

He had always known Gaara-kun wasn't a doll, or, at least, not _just_ a doll, but he hadn't known he was _this_.

Gaara-kun considered him with his depthless gaze, and Lee had never thought that his eyes would be so endless. What Gaara-kun saw, Lee had no clue.

Gaara-kun opened his mouth, as if about to speak, and wicked fangs glinted in the darkness, the only illumination being that of one of the younger boy's nightlights. Lee ogled at them, awed, and then Gaara-kun snapped his jaw shut with a quiet 'clack' of sharp teeth.

He leaned forward, putting one hand to the mattress, and Lee took a moment to notice black, pointed nails, and the other limb came towards him, cupping his cheek in an overly strong grip before Gaara-kun seemed to realize that he didn't need so much force. His grasp gentled and he pulled Lee closer.

With the sweetness of a blessing, he placed a soft, chaste kiss to Lee's forehead, and Lee closed his eyes at the feeling of chapped, warm lips against his skin. It was a new sensation to him. He had never had parents to kiss him goodnight or goodbye or hello. No friends had ever teasingly pecked his cheeks and no one pressed a heartbreaking smooch into his head of onyx hair.

When Gaara-kun pulled away, he instantly leaned in and kissed Gaara-kun's cheek, giggling at the half-surprised look that crossed the redhead's face.

"I'm happy to have met you too, Gaara-kun." His smile grew and he loped his arms around Gaara-kun's waist, setting his head on Gaara-kun's thigh. He yawned and snuggled close to the other's warmth. "Now let's go back to bed, or else I'll be very strange tomorrow, and no one wants that."

~::~

In the morning, Gaara-kun looked like a doll again. But he was awake and he tilted his round head when Lee sat up and yawned. When Lee stood and dressed, Gaara-kun patiently waited and then took to Lee's embrace without complaint.

He sat on the curve of Lee's arms as he walked to breakfast, Lee humming the whole way, and Gaara-kun's black slash of a mouth looked to be curled slightly upwards.

No one said a thing about Gaara-kun sitting at the table, eating small, cut pieces of broiled fish and grains of steamed rice. Only Nana-san stared, and she scowled.

Lee was used to that, though, and he was used to the glares he got for giggling at something no one else could see, and for talking to something that no one else could talk to.

The glares even bothered him less now, because he had Gaara-kun and Gaara-kun was the best friend anyone could ever have.

He liked to think that Gaara-kun thought the same thing of him.

~::~

_Author's Note: Hhhhmmmmmm ~ this was actually inspired by a Katekyo Hitman Reborn story, written by Breadsticks, called 'The Dollmaker'. It is a fantastic, rich story, and I idolize Breadsticks like no one could even KNOW. I just, I wish I had half of her skill, man. Just half, and I'd be set for life. Honestly, she has an incomplete story, only five chapters in, and it has over four hundred reviews! You know you're skilled when that happens. _

_Anywho ~ I actually wrote this for my hubby. Lunaka, I LOVE YOU._

_That is all._


End file.
